The past year was an exciting one for the members of the Digging DH team. We completed phase one of our research, having interviewed over 40 DH scholars about their work, and began to see some of the results through to the presentation stage at both the Digital Humanities Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Social Media and Society Conference in Toronto, Canada. Both presentations were well-received and the team has submitted them for publication in 2015.

Kim continued work on her PhD Thesis, tentatively titled “Creating context from curiosity: The role of serendipity in the research process of historians”. She was also invited to speak at Ryerson University for Associate University Librarians Day, and gave the keynote lecture Grass/Roots: Notes on a Public Digital Humanities at this year’s ACCESS conference in Calgary, AB.

This year Anabel and Kim were also joined by a new Post-Doc on the Digging DH Project. Lori McCay-Peet comes to us from Halifax, where she recently completed her PhD Thesis entitled “Investigating work-related serendipity, what influences it, and how it may be facilitated in digital environments.” Lori’s knowledge and insights into digital tools will be invaluable as we progress through the publications of several more papers over the coming year.

The images above (courtesy of Twilk) are some of the @diggingdh followers from Twitter. We know from communicating and collaborating with you that social media plays an enormous role in your lives, and we’re eager to hear all about it!

Members of the DiggingDH team (namely Kim Martin, and Ryan Hunt) will be attending MLA 2014 in Chicago this coming week. While we are there, we are hoping to talk to 25 conference attendees about the role of social media in their working lives, and how others have influenced their opinions of the digital humanities.

The interviews take about 25 minutes, and we will be onsite at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel to conduct them. You can sign up for a time that suits you HERE. Of course, if you would like to meet elsewhere, or at times other than those listed in the sign up sheet below, please email us at diggingdh@gmail.com or send us a tweet at @diggingdh and we’ll do our best to meet your needs.

Looking forward to meeting many of you in person for the first time, and to learning more about the social side of the digital humanities.

These days, in the Canadian academic community, you hear a lot about collaboration and knowledge mobilization. This is probably because these are key aspects of SSHRC’s strategy for community engagement, but the need to push our ideas out from the campus to the community is very close to my heart, and one of the ways I try to encourage this is through organizing monthly meetings of a Digital Humanities Off Campus group. We’ve had some really good discussions about DH: the future of the humanities, how to use technology in teaching, how to manage DH projects, and how to communicate with the public. Because we’re nearing the holiday season, our final meeting of DHOC will be a little more light hearted, but probably just as useful (if not more so) to those who are looking for future collaborations, or simply to be more aware of the DH initiatives taking place in London. The plan for the night is as follows:

Speed Networking

Organized like a speed dating event, but with no romantic illusions, the first half of the evening will see random pairings of participants that will switch every five minutes. In that short time period, you both have to introduce yourself and talk a bit about what you do, and then come up with a project that you could work on together that will showcase both your interests and skills. By the time an hour flies by, you’ve talked to 12 people about your work, and, even, if they are silly, you’ve come up with 12 new ideas for collaborating on a project!

Bring Your Own Tool

For this event, everyone is asked to think of a tool (digital if possible, but not necessarily) that they use in their work. If it is possible to bring the tool (or a laptop for demonstration) that’s great, but a description of the tool will do just fine. Everyone will find a partner and discuss these tools with them: encouraging questions about the tools, and exploration or demonstration if the tools are unknown to your partner. After 20 minutes of chatter, we’ll have a few volunteers explain their partners’ tool, and a way in which they might use it in their own research, to the rest of us.

This event is a great opportunity for newcomers to DHOC to join in – they’ll have a chance to meet everyone face to face – so if you know someone that’s been thinking of coming along, invite them! And just to clarify – there is no need to prepare for this event, its all in good fun, and a intended so everyone can chat about their work in a relaxed, supportive environment.

Looking forward to seeing everyone on Thursday, and for those that can’t make it: Happy Holidays!